LITMIR.BIZ

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who is texting him. “Let’s talk about where you really were.”

      Before she can answer Marino lets her know he has proof of exactly where she’s been since seven-fifteen a.m. He knows every mile she drove and every call she made on her cell phone including three to a moving company.

      “But I’d rather you tell me the details yourself,” he adds. “I’d rather give you a chance to be truthful so maybe I start feeling better about you than I do right this minute.”

      “I’ve been falsely accused.” She directs this to me and she’s not talking about her husband’s homicide.

      I can tell she means something else.

      “When Detective Machado reached you on your cell phone,” Marino asks her, “what did he say to you exactly?”

      “He identified himself. He told me what happened.” She stares down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap.

      “And you told him you were in New Hampshire. Even though it wasn’t true.”

      She nods yes.

      “You lied.”

      She nods again.

      “Why?”

      “I’ve been falsely accused.” Again she says this to me. “I thought that’s why he was calling, that the police were coming after me. I wanted to buy myself time so I could figure out what to do. I panicked.”

      “And you didn’t change your story about where you were even after Detective Machado informed you of the real reason he was calling,” Marino says.

      “It was too late. I’d already told him … I was scared. So scared I was stupid.” Her voice shakes badly, tears spilling. “And then all I could think about was Jamal. I wasn’t thinking about the lie or why I told it. I’m sorry. I’m not a bad person. I swear to God I’m not.”

      She digs into her pocketbook and finds a towelette. Tearing open the packet she wipes ruined makeup off her eyes, her face and I smell the fresh scent of cucumber. She suddenly looks years younger, could pass for twenty but probably is closer to thirty. A career as a high school psychologist requires college then a master’s degree. She’s been married three years. I calculate she’s twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

      “This is a nightmare. Please let me wake up from it.” She stares at me.

      Then she looks at the items I took out of the bags her husband carried in, the food, the drugs. Her attention fixes on the drugs.

      “Your husband had prescriptions filled at a CVS this morning,” I say to her. “Including one for Klonopin.”

      “For stress,” she says.

      “His stress?”

      “And recently mine. Both of us.”

      “Can you tell me what’s been going on with him?” I’m deliberate about what tense I use. “If he’s been anxious, stressed it’s helpful if I know why. A drug screen will tell us exactly what he has in his system. But if you have information I’d appreciate it.”

      My mention of a drug screen startles her. Apparently she hadn’t thought of it.

      “Klonopin,” she says. “I saw him take one this morning when we got up, and he said he was almost out. That he planned to stop at CVS while he was running errands.”

      “Might he have taken anything else?” I ask.

      “I … I don’t know. I wasn’t around him … I left at about seven.”

      I think of the damp paper towels in the trash, the drawers wiped clean. Not a week goes by that I don’t see a heroin-related death in my morgue.

      “What about street drugs?” I ask and then Marino jumps in.

      “The slightest residue and a drug dog’s going to hit on it,” he says. “I got a K-nine. Maybe I should go get him.”

      If the situation weren’t so tragic I would laugh. Quincy couldn’t tell the difference between heroin and baby powder. I text Anne to check Jamal Nari carefully for needle tracks, for damage to his septum, to do it right now.

      “Has your husband ever been on prescription pain medications?” I ask Joanna.

      “His back,” she says. “A bicycle accident when he was in his twenties, and he has ruptured disks.”

      “OxyContin?”

      She nods as my suspicions continue to gather. It’s not unusual for people who abuse OxyContin to switch to an opiate that’s less expensive. On the street an 80-milligram pill can cost as much as eighty dollars while a bag of heroin might go for a fraction of that price.

      “He’s been clean and sober for over ten years,” Joanna says to me.

      “But he’s been under stress? Do you know why?”

      “He was shutting me out. He’d disappear and not tell me where he was going or where he’d been.” She continues to stare at the prescriptions on the kitchen counter.

      “Was it you who cleaned the inside of all the drawers?” Marino asks and she doesn’t answer. “Did Jamal do it or you?”

      “I don’t know. He might have. I told you he’s been paranoid, worried someone’s out to get him.”

      “Coke? Heroin? What was he using?”

      “Nothing. I’ve told you, nothing.”

      “Nothing?” Marino drops his notepad, the pen on the coffee table. “Then who were you worried might find something?”

      “The police,” she says. “We’ve been worried about it for days. That’s why I was so sure about the reason for the call. I thought it was about that.”

      I glance at my phone as a text message lands.

      “About what exactly?”

      Old scars on legs were covered with tattoos. That’s as much as Anne can tell at this point but it’s enough.

      Nari used to mainline drugs and attempted to disguise the needle tracks with tattoos. At a glance there’s nothing fresh that would indicate current drug abuse. But it doesn’t mean he was finished with that part of his life.

      Have you scanned him yet? I write back.

       Getting ready to.

      “I’m not following you about the police,” Marino pushes Joanna.

      “Because they’ve been after us before for no good reason! They’d like nothing better than to make it stick this time! Do you have any idea what it’s like to go through that?”

      “The FBI did that.” Marino makes that point again. “It wasn’t us.”

      She wipes her face and I smell cucumber again. I remember the odor of bleach and I ask her. Did she or her husband use something with chlorine in it, maybe bleach to clean out the drawers and she says no. I tell her the paper towels in the trash will be tested in my labs and she looks dejected but she doesn’t change her answer about bleach. She’s allergic to it. She breaks out in hives. They never have it in the house.

      “Jamal thought someone was following him, stalking him,” she says. “Someone wearing a cap and dark glasses was riding his bumper. He thought it was the FBI again. One night he got up to use the bathroom and there was a face looking through the window. After that we frosted the glass in there and started closing all the curtains.”

      “When did he start feeling this way?” Marino picks up his notepad, begins taking notes again.

      “A few months ago.”

      “That’s why you suddenly decided to move?”

      “No.” She tells us the boy she’s been seen

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